


Forty Years

by NebulousMistress



Category: Rick and Morty, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Free to a good home, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 13:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11670366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: It's been forty years and the galaxy has chosen to forget much.





	Forty Years

**Author's Note:**

> This is less of a story and more of a fic idea. I don't plan on doing anything with it. This idea is free to a good home.
> 
> All I ask is that you tell me if you're using it. I wanna read it.

Forty years.

Forty years seemed like a lifetime ago. In a way it was. Forty years ago he'd been involved in secret intergalactic research, the head of science for the Atlantis project. Forty years ago the project was shut down.

No one knew why. Funding? Lack of usable progress? Isolationism? The rise of the new Galactic Federation in the wake of the Ori invasion?

All he knew was he'd been cast off. Adrift. Jennifer came with him. She was three months pregnant when they got married. He was happy but not for long.

Jennifer had a good job at Johns Hopkins, they didn't need the money. He quit his job and renovated the garage, turned it into a personal laboratory where he tinkered, worked, planned.

Their daughter Elizabeth was five when he perfected the portal gun and... then he wasn't her father anymore. Not really.

He remembered flashes of her childhood, moments when he came back to work on new projects or to lay low after a 'misunderstanding' with the Galactic Federation. The galaxy at large forgot the SGC so quickly. Soon he stopped trying to remind them. He even changed his name; if they were willing to forget Meredith Rodney McKay so easily then so would he. But he would not forget what they did.

He informed Jennifer of his name change but she always called him Rodney. Elizabeth, on the other hand, seemed to understand. Especially after that disastrous prom and she came to him asking the biggest favor in the world.

He should have said no. Jerry Smith was an idiot, incapable of providing for his little Beth. She was giving up her dream of being a doctor for this.

“You didn't think of an abortion?”

“Car broke down on the way to the clinic,” Beth told him. “Jerry took it as a sign and I'm tired of arguing with him. Please, Dad, for me?”

He signed his name on the court forms. He noted Jennifer's name was absent. Then he got drunk.

He never went to the wedding.

Now he stood in front of a suburban house, his 'car' parked in the driveway. Neighbors stared out their windows at the strange white-haired man in the labcoat. Geez, it was like they'd never seen a flying saucer before. He walked up the steps and knocked on the door.

A teenage boy opened the door and shouted back into the house. “Mom! Dad! Someone at the door!”

A woman answered his shouts and shoved him aside, scolding him for the noise. She paused in mid word.

“Dad?” she asked.

“You look just like your mother,” he said. “It's been awhile.”

“Mom?” the kid asked.

Beth pulled her son close. “Morty, this is your Grandpa Rick.”

“Why is there a flying saucer in the driveway?” Morty asked.

“Oh that's mine,” Rick said as he barged his way into the house.

“You have a flying saucer?” Morty asked, nervous eyes wide. “How? Where'd you get it?”

“Built it,” Rick said dismissively. “Built a lot of things. Hey, Beth, I need a place to lay low for a little while. Jerry isn't still here, is he?”

“Actually...” Beth said.

Rick groaned. He needed a drink.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://nebulousmistress.tumblr.com/) where you can find a hundred little fanfics I never posted here. Check it out, drop a line, maybe dare me to write something for you.


End file.
